


Come And Warm My Cold Bones

by Gray_Skies_Rising



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics), The Flash - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Ambiguous/Open Ending, An AU of an AU, And that’s the entire fic, Court of Owls, Dialogue Heavy, Dick Grayson Needs a Hug, Dick Grayson is Nighthawk, Dick Grayson is Not Okay, Dick Grayson is a Talon, Dubious Morality, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Wally West Needs a Hug, Wally West is Kid Flash, Wally West is The Flash, Wally loves Dick and Dick loves Wally, after effects of torture, but they’ve got some shit to work through first, it’s pretty ambiguous, look - Freeform, slight - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28381299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gray_Skies_Rising/pseuds/Gray_Skies_Rising
Summary: “Why didn’t you tell me? About-,” Wally waves his hand between them in a vague gesture to try and enrapture everything he wants to say, “-about us. About you. Just… why, Dick?”“I-,” There was a slight tightening in Dick’s shoulders before he let both them and his head drop. “I was scared.”He doesn’t elaborate.Or, Dick makes an assumption about his and Wally’s relationship, it has consequences. Don’t worry though, Wally’s here to set him straight. They’ve just got somethings to work through first.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Wally West
Comments: 4
Kudos: 99





	Come And Warm My Cold Bones

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is a BirdFlash soulmate AU of my Dark!Bats AU. You don’t have to read those stories to get what’s going on, especially since some of the characteristics that I have given Dick here, I haven’t been able to explore yet in my Dark ‘verse.
> 
> Basically what you need to know is-  
> Dick is a Talon.  
> That Bats are isolated and largely considered myths to the few that even hear about them.  
> Dick uses patches or injections to put pigment into his skin to help hide the grey flesh and black veins. However, whenever he is injured and heals, the pigment doesn’t stay.
> 
> The soulmate AU that happens in this fic is the one where you are born with two eye colors. One yours, the other your soulmate’s. When you meet your soulmate your eye colors will become the right one. A piece of lore that I kinda sprinkled in, but didn’t outright say, is that your eye colors won’t switch if you or the other person is wearing colored contacts, shades, or those glasses that darken when exposed to sunlight.
> 
> Tw: swearing, the Court of Owls, after effects of torture, slight PTSD, mentions of killing, mentions of blood, and mentions of death
> 
> Please tell me if I missed any!

Wally sat, with his knees drawn up and arms wrapped tightly around them, on the bed of his…  _ friend’s? Ex-friend’s? Soulmate’s? _ On  _ Dick’s  _ bed.

_ Oh God, what even were they? _

Wally rubbed at his left eye. Without the constant pain that had plagued him for so long, it felt unnaturally numb. Wally wanted to pace, but the room was too small and he didn't want to go into the rest of the apartment. Not yet.

Three days. Wally sighed and rested his head against the headboard. That’s how long they, Wally and Dick, were down there.

Three days of Wally being chained to the wall and Dick being shoved into a metal tube that he couldn’t get out of.

Three days of barely enough food and water to keep his metabolism going.

Three days of Dick only being released only to have to  _ dispatch _ people-who-weren’t-exactly-people who were released into their cell.

Three days of the reveal that Dick was one of the people-who-weren’t-exactly-people.

Three days of the reveal that Batman was  _ in fact _ real and Dick was one of his infamous partners.

Three days of wondering why, in all their years of friendship, Dick had never revealed that they were soulmates.

It had been six hours since their escape.

Six hours of hunkering down in Dick’s apartment with the rest of the bat-crew stationed around them.

Six hours of being on constant alert.

Six hours of not being able to talk about anything that had happened because there were people everywhere.

Six hours that Wally had spent in completely overwhelmed and spent, he doesn’t think he’s ever been more happy to be sent away from the main group before.

Nobody had come to check on him for a while, so he figures the danger has passed and everyone is winding down.

Wally leans back and traces the shapes on the ceiling. For a split second he wishes he to go back in time and stop himself from becoming friends with Dick, before immediately reprimanding himself. 

Messing with time had extreme repercussions. Stopping something like his friendship with Dick would definitely send out major waves.

Wally huffs and begins to study the different patterned patches that decorated the blanket on the bed.

After what feels like hours later, the door to the room creeks open. Dick strides in, shades back in place, and leaves the door open.

Wally can't be sure if it's on purpose or not. If Dick had left him a way to escape and leave, probably to never come back. Because Wally was a coward and if he left now, he wasn’t coming back. And he’d hate himself for the rest of his life for not staying to hear the explanation or excuse Dick would give him.

Dick stopped at the foot of the bed. His hands were shoved into his front pockets, as if it would hide the grayish-white flesh and black veins that ran up to his elbows and contrasted starkly against his bronze skin.

_ Flesh hitting slick, bloody cement. Cold cement. Cold and black and- _ Wally began to trace the quilting on the blanket he was sitting on with his eyes. It was vines. Vines were green and grew above ground and in the sun and-

“The others are asleep,” Dick said softly, as if speaking above a whisper would break the tentative and unspoken truce between them.

Maybe it would. Wally wouldn’t know, he just nodded his head in acknowledgement, eyes fixed firmly on the end of the bed, not daring to look any farther, and let the silence drag on.

Dick didn’t seem to mind the quiet. He clearly thought that Wally was going to be the one to start the discussion, probably thinking that Wally was just gathering his thoughts.

Wally almost snorted at the thought, almost dredged up a feeling other than the  _ cold, empty, _ and  _ confusion _ that sat in his stomach like a rock. Gathering his thoughts? Wally’s thoughts were scattered to the far corners of the galaxy! The chances of them coming together to form a coherent thought other than  _ why? _ was going to be near impossible.

After what feels like hours, Wally looks up and locks his eyes with Dick’s through his shades. Even with that dark glass between them, Wally could still make out the bright irises. Dick’s eyes aren’t on him like Wally’s are on Dick, there stuck on the wall behind him.

_ Fuck it, _ Wally thinks and plushes the  _ “why?” _ from behind his teeth and onto a breathless whisper.

For a split second, Wally thinks he sees Dick’s lip twitch up and Wally thinks he's going to make a joke and somehow lighten the heavy atmosphere that has settled on them like a weighted blanket. But then the second is gone and Dick just pushes his own breath (something he doesn't need, apparently) out and rocks back on his heels.

“You're going to have to be more specific, sorry.” His voice is unemotional and the apology comes out robotic.

Wally hates it. Hates that those people did that to him, that they broke him like that. He can’t dwell on it though, first he needs to sort through the mess that  _ they _ left.

“Why didn’t you tell me? About-,” Wally waves his hand between them in a vague gesture to try and enrapture everything he wants to say, “-about us. About you. Just…  _ why, _ Dick?”

“I-,” There was a slight tightening in Dick’s shoulders before he let both them and his head drop. “I was scared.”

He doesn’t elaborate.

“Scared?” Wally prompts.

Dick glances between the bed, to his face, and back to the bed, as if asking permission. Wally gives a slight nod, even if he doesn’t understand what he’s giving permission for.

Dick slowly, ever slowly, lowers himself onto the end of the bed. It doesn’t stop the bed from creaking, though.

The creaking makes Wally flinch  _ (the groan and snap of bones reaching their breaking point) _ and causes Dick to freeze, his shoulder back up at his ears. The flickering of Dick’s eyes from him to the door makes Wally think he may have miscalculated. Maybe the open door wasn’t for Wally. Maybe it was for Dick.

Wally can see the exact moment Dick decides to make a break for it. He can see the tightening of Dick’s muscles as he readies to spring.

Wally can’t have that, not now. So he springs first, catching the sleeve of Dick’s shirt in a tight fist.

Dick stares at where they're connected. As if he can’t imagine why Wally would hold him back, why Wally would want him to stay.

The skin of Wally’s knuckles, where he accidently brushed skin in his desperation to stop Dick,  _ burns. _ Every instinct is screaming at him to close the distance, to wrap Dick in his arms and never let go, to warm his cold (was it always this cold? Why hadn’t he noticed?) skin, to make empty promises to fix the world just for them. Because Dick, whether he likes it or not, whether or not they ever see each other after this, is his  _ soulmate _ , and soulmates  _ don’t _ abandon the other in times of need.

“Dick,” his voice is back to being soft and broken and  _ pleading, _ “please.”

Dick finally,  _ finally, _ meets his eyes. The shades plus the only light coming from an abnormally bright moon, Wally couldn’t make out the emotions playing in Dick’s eyes. So he brings up his other hand and pushes the glasses into his hair.

Glowing, golden iris stare into his own forest green. A blink and they’re a watery blue that is so heartachingly  _ normal _ that it makes Wally want to vomit. Another blink and they’re back to gold. Wally briefly wonders if it hurts when they changed colors, like it had for him.

_ “Please.” _ He whispers.

“Wally,” Dick starts, “I’m not human, I haven’t been in a long time. Hell, I’m not even alive. I’m a reanimated  _ corpse. _ I only age when I want to. I only breathe when I need to speak. I only beat my heart to circulate the stuff in my veins that let me be able to regrow entire limbs.”

Dick closed his eyes and reached up and took Wally’s hands off his face (when did they get there?). He placed Wally’s hands down onto the bed.

“I died when I was eight.” his eyes were still firmly closed as he started into his story. “Two days latter, I was completely reanimated. For the next eighteen months I trained. After my training was complete, I was put on assignments. Assignments to  _ silence people, _ Wally. I didn’t have a voice back then. I said what they told me to say. I did exactly as I was told. When I didn’t… well, you saw what happened.”

Wally could still hear Dick’s screams and his begging as  _ they _ forced him into the cryotube.

“Later, Bruce saved me. I thought it was over and I tried to redeem myself, through Robin and then through Nighthawk. I’ve killed so many people, Wally. I’ve killed, and I can’t find it inside myself to regret it. Why? Because I did it by order of the Court, and inside me, deep down, I have been and always will be loyal to them. No matter how much I try to shake off their claws, I can’t. It had seemed to work for a while, when we had thought we had dismantled them, but they came back and so did their claws. I know that when they call their Gray Son of Gotham, I will come running because they’ve etched my loyalty to them into my very bones.

“So, yes. I was scared. Scared of what I’ve done. Scared of what I will do. Scared of the fact that I will burden my soulmate, will burden you, with the fact that I’m a murder. Scared that I will corrupt one of the only good things I have left. Scared that one day I will stand over your bed with a knife in my hand and the order to silence you.

“When you talked about your soulmate, you looked like you thought they could do nothing wrong, no matter what. I wanted to be selfish. Damn, I wanted so bad to take my glasses off and reveal myself to you. To be the object of your affections and to hear about how we would be side by side for all eternity. But I couldn’t do that to you. I couldn’t crush your dreams by revealing your soulmate is nothing but a broken bird who will go running back to the ones that tore off its wings when they call without a second thought. I couldn’t saddle someone as good and whole as you with someone as bad and broken as me.”

Dick was crying. Silent tears that Wally wanted to wipe away, but his hands were still pinned to the bed. Suddenly anger spiked through him.

“Richard John Grayson-Wayne!” Wally’s voice was thick with multiple emotions, but anger was easily identifiable.

Dick jerked back in surprise at the sudden emotion. Blue eyes watched him wide eyed as Wally gripped his shoulders.

“Don’t.” He hissed through clenched teeth and narrowed eyes. “Don’t you  _ dare _ assume I can’t handle something! Don’t you  _ dare _ think for one second that I wouldn’t accept my soulmate, flaws and all!”

Wally scooted back to lean against the beds headboard, and dragged Dick with him. Dick was stiff as a board, apparently not thinking that this was anywhere in the cards. Wally gave into his soul-instincts and pressed them together in a tight embrace, that seemed to do the trick to get Dick to relax.

“You, sir.” Wally poked his fingers into Dick’s side and, true to form, Dick tried to wiggle out of the embrace and away from the ticklish fingers. “You are an amazing person. You care about others in such a way that you would give them the skin off your back if it meant they could get a little farther than you. You make the best puns and butcher the English language in such a way that I often wonder if it’s actually intentional. You can’t cook worth shit, but can bake like a professional. Sure your self deprecating, and have killed, and we’ll need to talk about that and the fact that it took us getting kidnapped,  _ THREE  _ identity reveals, and literal torture for you to tell me we are soulmates, but we’ll get to that later. What I’m trying to say is-,”

Wally put his hands on either side of Dick’s face and made his soulmate look at him. There’s four lines of white flesh that rake across his brown skin that Wally tries his best to ignore for the moment.

“Let me decide for myself whether or not you’re worth my time and love, okay? I know that life with my soulmate would not always be sunshine and rainbows, but I know that if I chose, if  _ we _ chose, to put in the time and effort into a good relationship, those moments will come more often than not.”

Wally dropped Dick’s head and wrapped his arms back around him. He buried his nose into Dick’s hair and continued talking.

“I don’t know what we are right now. I don’t know what I’m doing right now. My soul-instinct is telling me to keep you here forever and show you just how much I love you. But… but I know that if we don’t talk about these things and about what happened while we were down there, we’ll fall apart. I want to start slow, really slow, okay? I want to learn about Richard “Dick” John Grayson-Wayne and about all the ways he’s both similar and completely different from Dick Grayson. I want to build this relationship on friendship and trust, so we have something to fall back on if this doesn’t work out. If this doesn’t work out, I want us to still be friends because I don’t know if I can lose you at the moment. Not after everything. Okay?”

Dick’s own hands came to wrap themselves around Wally, and he nodded into his chest.

“I think I can do that.”

Wally smiled into Dick’s hair, “Good.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you guys enjoyed the read!


End file.
